Create a go-to-market strategy for a different business model of ultimate convenience, providing an alternative for today´s last-mile food delivery platforms

The emergence of food delivery aggregators not just answered the need of convenience of consumers but also created a new standard in convenience by being possible to receive a meal in 30 minutes from broad base of restaurants. However, this comes at a significant cost for restaurants, up to 30% of the ticket shall be a fee for the provider and for consumers a delivery fee that goes up to 39% in a €10 order. Despite the convenience it seems inefficient from a value creation standpoint for all the stakeholders involved. In this work I will research how to design an alternative business model to the one from food aggregators, providing similar ultra-convenience but at the same time creating more value for all the parties involved (food brands and consumers) and also being profitable and sustainable. The proposed business model shall be a capillary network of micro marketplaces across the city, where consumers can find meals from their favourite restaurant brands – further research with food brands can be developed in order to bring their perspective to the model. These micro marketplaces will be located in buildings not just with significant footfall, but where consumers do need the most of a quick meal – offices and universities. To prove the concept this work uses Lisbon as a beachhead market, although scalability to greater metropolitan cities shall be considered for further growth. A research was conducted and with the use of primary and secondary data it was found that the serviceable available market for Lisbon is ~430M€, 92% of consumers order from food aggregators or take-away restaurants, the main motivation to order is convenience and the main obstacles are price, a balanced diet and the delivery fee. It was also assessed the willingness to buy from a machine like the one it is foreseen along the work and it as rated 5.1 (out of 10), suggesting that there is some traction but its deployment, visual appeal and customer experience shall be carefully detailed to ensure customer engagement.The financial plan illustrates that it would be possible to achieve profitability at the 2nd year and reaching ~30M€ of sales by the 4th year. This in turn will lead to an IRR of 178% as a central value but by running a sensitivity analysis that evaluated the effect of the two most critical variables (sales vs. waste) in a worst-case scenario it would be 144%. Such rates of return are consistent with what would be demanded by an investor to commit capital for a start-up venture. This research illustrates that is possible to design this alternative model where consumers can get quick access to their favourite meal in a more affordable way while restaurants can benefit from producing those meals on their idle times and being more close to their consumers through a new distribution channel. This work shows that this model can be profitable but also matches the investments returns demanded for such endeavour. However, one can also conclude that scalability will be key for profitability as also operational efficiency, given the very thin margins this format delivers